Maximum PC

Posted here because I don't need help to buy our build Unless of course someone wants to help pay for my build

I don't normally do this (normally wait for the new hardware then post pics & benchmarks, etc...), but I'm excited Though not a fully new build, basically I'm just doing a motherboard & CPU swap from my current system. However I still consider it a new build because all my purchases this year were made with the idea of a new build.

Coming out of the current system:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
CPU: Phenom II X6 2.8GHz 6-core AM3... well, actually there's an Opteron 3280 2.4GHz AM3+ 4-core* / 8-thread CPU in that motherboard because I was too lazy to swap back to the 1055t after testing out the 3280... *though AMD calls it 8-cores, I don't, I call it a really f'd up attempt at Hyper-Threading...

New system config:
> Motherboard: ASRock X79 Extreme9 LGA 2011 ordered today 12 SATA ports (8 @ 6Gbps) + 2 USB 3.0 front panel headers
> CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz 6-Core ordered today
> CPU Cooler: Corsair H100 picked up 4 1/2 months ago for $86
> Case: Corsair Obsidian 550D Picked up 3 months ago for $109 friggin nice case, worth every penny & then some
> Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk II 750Watt purchased last year with same deal, forgot to send in MIR Will be replacing next time a good deal comes up on the Seasonic X650 or X750, because I hear that the best OC on above mobo is achieved when both 8-pin connectors are used & the Silencer only has one 8-pin 12V motherboard connector.
> Memory: Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-2133 11-11-11-30 purchased 2 kits 6 months ago for 16GB of goodness for $112 total
> OS Drive: Vertex 4 SATA III 128GB SSD Purchased 2 months ago during Shell-Shocker sales ($100 & $80), running in RAID-0 config.
> Storage Drives: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III w/64MB cache two of them, purchased before the flood that drove prices way up.
> Optical Drive 1: LG BH14NS40 14x SATA Blu-Ray Burner
> Optical Drive 2: Lite-On 24x SATA DVD Burner because sometimes I need to burn a bunch of DVD's in a short time span (i.e. burning to both drives simultaneously) & for Lightscribe since LG removed Lightscribe support in their 14x Blu-Ray burner.
> Video Card: Just upgraded 12/16/12 to Gigabyte GTX-660-Ti Overclocked due to fan failure on the 460... Gigabyte is replacing the fan assembly for the 460, but didn't want to be without while they snail-mail it to me... sounded like a good excuse anyway
> Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64bit OEM


Obviously, I don't need all that power for gaming, that would just be a waste of money... so what do I need all that power for??? Primarily video editing and encoding 720p/1080i content to Blu-Ray, and I'd be lying if I said Folding at Home performance wasn't a factor... and before someone says anything... DDR3-2133 RAM purchased because it makes overclocking my current AMD platform super simple, because it runs at 9-9-9-24 timings @ DDR3-1866 speed, and because it was a damned good price at the time.

Future upgrades will include a new 3 or 4 TB storage drive, new video card as mentioned, and hopefully a Dell Ultra-Sharp 30" display... Actually, I debated all last week till this morning... 30" Ultra-Sharp or mobo/CPU, mobo/CPU or 30" Ultra-Sharp. Ultimately, my car played the final hand... need to have the timing belt replaced (it's 15,480 miles overdue), if I went the Ultra-Sharp route, I wouldn't have enough left to cover the labor on the car till the following pay-day, so display will wait.

wtf happened to my 2nd post... I spent 5 minutes last night posting teaser pics... sigh...

Oh well... not posting pics right now cause I'm on the iPad, but I'm siting here watching FAH working on project 7808, a project I'm a little familiar with, they run pretty well on my 1055T getting almost 12k ppd with the CPU @ 3.15Ghz... Right now, FAH is reporting 41,881 ppd on the 3930k @ 4Ghz Temps are a little higher than I would like, ranging from 62C - 69C per core, might have to take it apart & redo the thermal paste if they don't improve by this weekend.

Quick teaser, UEFI main screen, checking BIOS version before any attempt at overclocking - shiped with most current BIOS!


& no default background this time despite the fresh Windows install

Temps definitely higher than I'd like, even with the H100 in push/pull config.

Fixed it.

ROFLMAO

Trying again...

The boxes:


The Overclock King???


A closer look at the box contents

NOTE: the foam around the motherboard, which is very well packaged inside there, it has that top ring of foam, then it also has a 2nd layer of foam zip-tied to the motherboard using the 4 corner mounting holes.

The case, stripped of it's previous tenants, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 & Opteron 3280, & awaiting the new arrivals.


For the best mix of cooling power & 'quiet' operation, I pulled the very loud stock 120mm fans off the H100, and instead setup a "hybrid" push-pull configuration using dual 120mm fans mounted to the H100 radiator pushing air through the radiator & out the top of the case, and dual 140mm mounted to the outside of the case pulling hot air through the radator. This of course was a tricky proposition... there simply isn't enough room inside the case to setup a push/pull mounted internally, and how do you go about mounting both 140mm fans to the outside of the case & a radiator w/attached 120mm fans inside the case in the same location. Took a bit of thinking, but I figured it out!

The 140's were mounted first, using 4 mounting holes per fan.


Then I had 2 problems to think about in mounting the radiator. One the radiator needs to be secured from the outside of the case, but there are two 140mm fans in the way... second, once secured in place, the 140mm fans will be spinning dangerously close to the screws holding the radiator in place...

Thanks to Antec, the 2nd part of that became a non issue, from my mom's old computer, the one I replaced for mothers day, I pulled these out:

A full 1/8" shorter than the Corsair mounting screws for the H100 leaving plenty of clearance between the fan blades & the screw heads.

But things didn't exactly go as planned... Although I was able to go between fan blades to screw the screws into the radiator...

because of the orientation of the 4 support bars on the fans, one intended screw location for the radiator (per fan) was completely blocked, so there are only 2 screws holding the radiator in place.

Of course now that I see just how hot this CPU runs, I'm thinking of a real water cooling loop for cooling it off, but using a Phobya 280mm copper & brass radiator only this time, the radiator would have to be outside the case...

Here it is assembled & ready to rock-n-roll:


As soon as I booted it up, I went into BIOS, checked the BIOS version which was already the current BIOS, then went to the overclocking section & set her up at 4GHz. Then secure erased my Vertex 4 drives, & set them up in RAID-0 and installed Windows. As soon as I had all my drivers installed, I checked out the RAID array to see how the Intel's SATA III compared to AMD's.

On the AMD Chipset, the same setup didn't even score 1200...

Then it was time to see what the CPU could do, so I installed Cinebench: Results at 4GHz


Results at 4.4GHz, BTW, at the very bottom you'll also see the score for my overclocked Opteron 3280 which reached a whopping 2.64GHz or 240Mhz overclock!


Then of course, I loaded Folding at Home checked that performance out, & then it was time for some Skyrim... noticeable improvement over the 2.4GHz Opteron, & even seems like an improvement over the 3.15Ghz Phenom II X6.

Tomorrow, I plan on a real test... the reason I went with a 6-core LGA-2011 processor in the first place, Blu-Ray encoding

Video Encoding results: I shot a 44 second clip this afternoon with mostly clear sky's. I decided to just simply encode the raw video to H.264 Blu-Ray using Premier Pro CS6 (trial), no editing, no filters, no added effects, just a straight encoding job.

So, I setup the old Phenom II X6 1055t & overclocked it to what I've been using it at, a stable 3.15GHz (14x225MHz) install Premier Pro, copy the file from SD card to computer & begin. Encoding completed 1 minute 22.6 seconds later. I then go to the new PC, on which I've already copied the file to & already installed Premier Pro, and I have to be honest here, I'm a little dissapointed... considering the 4.4GHz clock speed (an advantage of almost 1.3GHz) & 12 threads, I was expecting a little better, but still managed to come in at under half the time with just 38.8 seconds to complete the encoding.

Still more than half off of a 44 second clip, just think of all the time saved on a 30 - 40 minute video

Hopefully, after the Indigo Extreme gets here & after I setup proper Water cooling, I might be able to get her up to 5GHz for even faster video work... I can always hope anyway.

You had shown FAHcontrol in an earlier post so I need to elaborate on some technical issues in my head. Could you close that window down and give us a real teaser with a new screen shot? Cowboys fan there? Oh wait, don't...put it on Reddit.

Push/Pull...the irony makes me chuckle FAHcontrol is your problem there.

Damnit Kleink.... you ruined the surprise and my stomach

Sorry, can't post that screen shot, though I met her only briefly, I will respect her right to privacy, even though like 30,000 people saw her that day at WJRR's Earth Day Birthday 17...

I just face palmed that that I'm such a NERD in the conversation and lost my geekhood (for a bit. I'll level up again). Everyone but me probably had fun and just made an MPC Meme IMO. I wanna try too!

Moving along. Killer box! Oh wait...errr. How do you like that MKII 750? I had to RMA a MKII which seemed odd to me w/ that brand. Mk III seems fine thus far, but just wondering if I got struck by lighting (i.g. rare) or if it was a bad time/batch for PCP&C.

It happens... I've been happy with mine so far, [knock on wood] it's been solid as a rock since day 1, though this system is currently pushing it much harder than the AMD system ever could.

Okay, 3 weeks in, & my only real complaints on the 3930K only involve overclocking. Specifically heat, and power consumption (based on Kill-A-Watt meter) when overclocked, and these complaints are based on my Phenom II X6 1055t overclocking results because that's all I have to go by...

1055t runs at a default clock speed of 2.8GHz, with a 0.05V increase in the vCore, I can run the 1055t at 3.5GHz(14x250), that's a 25% Clock speed increase. With this increase, my 100% load temps go up 23% from a maximum of 48C at stock to a maximum of 59C (above 3.5GHz, temps begin to shoot up rapidly hitting 64C @ 3.53GHz & 69C @ 3.54GHz), and system power consumption goes up 24% from 285W (averaged over 181 continuous hours 100% load Folding @ Home) to 354W (averaged over 84 continuous hours 100% load F @ H), surprisingly well in line with the overclock & actually lower than I would have expected.

3930K runs at a default clock speed of 3.2GHz, not sure how much vCore is increased, the motherboard comes pre-loaded with overclocking defaults & I haven't delved into the details too much yet. At 4.4GHz (37.7% Clock speed increase), core temps go up 55% from a max of 56C at stock clock, to a max of 87C at 4.4GHz. A bit much IMO, but compared to the power consumption, that's nothing... Power consumption jumps from 304 Watts(averaged over 158 continuous hours 100% load F @ H) up to 522 Watts (averaged over 232 continuous hours 100% load F @ H), that's a 72% increase I could see maybe 45 - 50% but a 72% increase off of nearly 38% clock speed increase, WTF Intel... And some people are getting up to 5.2GHz on these CPU's with H2O cooling, I'd hate to see how much higher that's driving up the power consumption.

Hopefully, after diggin into the nuts & bolts of overclocking this CPU, I can get by with a lower vCore & thus lower the power consumption & temps...

Still, overall, I'm thrilled with the 3930K, it's a huge improvement at stock speeds over my "comfortable" overclock of 3.15GHz (14x225 stock voltage) on the 1055t in every aspect including gaming performance. In the end, I'll probably set the 3930K at 4GHz & leave it there for a decent balance between Folding @ Home performance & power consumption, while still overclocking higher for special occasions like chimp challenge, et.al... & long length video encodings.

Nice build!!!

So have you made any new upgrades?

Did you ask Santa for that Dell Ultra-Sharp 30" for Christmas?

Corsair Obsidian 550D – Any problems with it so far? Can you run it with the front door closed? I’m not a fan of the foam inside the case is it removable? I wonder how the foam will hold up over time??

I’m thinking the Cowboys might have lowered their standards to be a cheerleader a little too much!!

That picture is disturbing on sooo many levels!!!

No new upgrades yet. I was going to have Santa drop off the Dell... then my car decided otherwise... again

Love the 550D, even the foam, it definitely dampens the noise. It's adhesive backed so it's not removable in the sense of it being taken off & put back on, but it could be scraped off permanently. All foam will eventually oxidize throughout (aka dry-rot) & crumble into dust, but the foam "seemd" like a quality foam that "should" last many years before that happens, but only time will tell for sure.

I don't leave the front doors on my cases, I use the opticals enought that it becomes a pain to have a front door on there.

For what I paid, the case cannot be beat IMO, but at that price point I'm doing without some things I'd love to have like a removable motherboard tray, more room behind the motherboard for easier cable management, more room up top between the radiator & motherboard, & sturdier hard drive carriers. All of which would have put the case beyond my affordability level at the time of purchase & I prefer to put my money into performance hardware (GPU's, RAM, CPU) & externals, before going all out on a case.

I'd rather forget about that 'cheerleader' so thank you very much for refreshing the memory

No Dell for Christmas but with the fans failing on my GTX-460, I went ahead & picked up the king of the 2GB 660 Ti's... Gigabyte GTX-660-ti OC This thing is running rock solid stable with boost clock at 1241MHz (with no speed drops) & highest temp I've seen so far (at that clock speed) is 64C while running FurMark with a room temp of 78.6F